


open up your fists, this fallen world doesn't hold your interests (doesn't hold your soul)

by 26stars



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, AoS Rarepair Echange 2018, F/F, My characters hug each other bc I can't, Skye | Daisy Johnson Feels, description of bullet wound and care, season 3-4 interim, t for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 16:42:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16814503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: When an unstoppable force meets an immovable objectAoS Rarepair Echange 2018Prompts: "I'm sorry I screwed everything up for us"+ "Please just let me take care of you"Title from "Daisy" by Switchfoot





	open up your fists, this fallen world doesn't hold your interests (doesn't hold your soul)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andreashipss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andreashipss/gifts).



> Andrea, you said you liked angst, and angst I have brought (your prompts certainly set it up well!). This is my first time giving this pairing a try, so I hope you'll forgive me for its brevity. Hope you enjoy it!

Daisy drops the container of baby powder into her shopping basket and checks the aisle in both directions before heading further back into the store. _Snacks, tampons, motor oil…_ she recites to herself as she walks, her eyes always active on her surroundings.

In the snack aisle, she feels the back of her neck prickle just as she pulls a box of oatmeal bars down from a shelf. She glances subtly around under the guise of reading the nutrition label and sees a tall, dark-haired woman turn the opposite direction as she looks her way, heading away from Daisy, further down the aisle. The woman’s basket is suspiciously empty and she’s wearing a bulky coat that is just a little too thick for the temperature outside, but Daisy is hard-up enough for tampons to risk another two minutes in this homegrown grocery store. Once those are in her basket and she was headed for the register, however, she sees the woman leaving ahead of her, a plastic sack and a receipt in one hand. Relieved but not yet relaxed, Daisy bounces subtly on her heels throughout her wait in line until she can bolt out of the store with her cash-paid purchases, her head down to avoid the gaze of the security cameras on her way out.

In the warm dusk of the parking lot, the halogen lights already casting an orange glow on the asphalt, Daisy’s eyes sweep her surroundings again as she takes a slightly circuitous route to her black van, which she’d parked well away from any other cars. Seeing nothing and no one suspicious, Daisy finally approaches her car and opens the side door first, ostensibly to chuck in her bag, but mostly to make sure no one else is in the vehicle. Nothing is out of place, and she hurriedly jumps in the driver’s seat and fires up the engine.

She drives eight towns down the highway before she stops again for the foregone motor oil.

She never does discover the tracker tucked into her car’s undercarriage.

* * *

Five weeks, two fractured bones, and three Watchdog confrontations later, Daisy is holed up at a Wisconsin motel with the fruits of her latest escapades.

The cash is in a musty duffle bag and stowed in a ceiling tile above her bed. A half-empty bottle of bone-growth pills keeps vigil on the nightstand. Her laundry is drying over the shower rod and in the closet, dripping intermittently into the dust-caked carpet. And Daisy is nearly done deleting recent CCTV footage of her car on the roads when there is a knock on the door.

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t answer. She sits through a second knock, knowing that housekeeping would have identified themselves. She waits a further moment, waiting—if not hoping—for a voice she recognizes to call her name.

But a third knock never comes, and she waits a good ten minutes before climbing off the bed and very carefully checking around the curtain. There is no one in sight in either direction of her door, but she still has the chain in the lock as she cracks it to check outside.

A brown paper sack is sitting on the step, and Daisy opens the door wide enough to fish it in and inspect its contents. A new bottle of bone growth pills is right on top, and at first Daisy assumes this is a new variation on Elena’s delivery methods. But underneath it are a small collection of snacks she likes.

And a canned drink that might as well be a message in neon lights.

She leaves the motel within five minutes, wet laundry hastily thrown in a plastic bag and the Cactus Cooler left intentionally in front of her door, hoping it reads like the middle finger she wants it to be.

* * *

But Inhuman powers don’t change the fact that even if Daisy is a trained spy, her ex-girlfriend still has nearly a decade of experience on her, and there is something infuriatingly inevitable about this whole thing now.

So just because Daisy isn’t surprised when a baton flies over her head in the direction of the trigger-happy Watchdogs as she staggers back to her van with a bullet lodged in her shoulder doesn’t mean she isn’t mostly furious as a pair of familiar arms catch her when she stumbles on the gritty road.

“Get the fuck off me,” she mutters, shoving roughly against the almost-embrace but confused to find only one of her arms cooperating.

“Just keep pressure on that shoulder,” Bobbi says as she dumps Daisy into the backseat and catches her stave on its return before jumping into the driver’s seat.

Daisy doesn’t say a word as Bobbi leads them on a red-lining drive out of town, eventually pulling off the highway onto a frontage road before turning down an unpaved two-laner to stop and check on Daisy.

“Bullet still in there?” Bobbi says as she flips on the interior light and climbs back into the cabin area.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Daisy responds instead, remaining with her back defiantly away from Bobbi, glaring at her in the sudden light. Bobbi’s natural blonde color is hidden under an unremarkable bottle brown, twisted behind her head in a messy bun. Her blue eyes are bright as ever though, and Daisy hates the involuntary flutter that ripples through her insides at the sight of them.

“What’s it look like?” her ex says, finding the first aid kit under one of the seats without much trouble and popping it open. “Come on, I’ll help you get that out.”

“I’m fine. Now get the fuck out of my car.”

“I’ll get the fuck out when you’re actually fine,” Bobbi says, tearing open several packets and pulling on a pair of gloves. “Now turn around and let me help you.”

Not believing that promise for a second but accepting that she will never be able to stitch this particular place on her back by herself, Daisy turns away and attempts to pull off her shirt, grateful for an excuse to look away from Bobbi. Gentle hands pry the blood-soaked garment up and out of the way, and Daisy manages to keep all her whimpers under her breath while Bobbi sets about examining and cleaning the wound.

“You got some alcohol somewhere in here?” Bobbi asks after finding the bullet’s new home within Daisy’s muscles. “This is gonna hurt.”

“It already hurts—just do it.”

Bobbi doesn’t fight her, but once she starts prying the intruder out, Daisy _does_ wish she had anything taking the edge off.

Once she feels it slide free of her flesh and Bobbi’s hands are instead cleaning out the wound, Daisy manages to speak again.

“I thought you had to stay gone.”

_That’s why you left like you did, isn’t it? Without a word or a backwards glance?_

“From SHIELD,” Bobbi responds levelly, and Daisy jumps as a needle pokes into her skin without warning. “And it sure looks like you’re not running with them now.”

They’re both quiet for a moment while Bobbi works and Daisy stoically bites her lip, but when she hears the needle being set aside and feels a damp cloth dabbing off her skin, Daisy twists out of Bobbi’s reach and pulls on a clean t-shirt.

“Thank you, now get out,” she says, meeting those fierce blue eyes again.

Bobbi doesn’t move, and she doesn’t look away.

“You know I didn’t want to leave you all. Leave you. I’m sorry I screwed everything up for us, but I didn’t have a choice.”

“You fixed my shoulder, now get out of my car,” Daisy repeats firmly, aware that with every word she lets the Mockingbird get in edgewise, the weaker her resolve gets.

And sure enough, Bobbi’s next delivery is an Oscar-worthy monologue.

“Please, Daisy, just let someone take care of you. It doesn’t have to be me, but either you need to find someone who you can stomach it from, or you need to start fucking doing it yourself. The broken bones, the starvation diet, the home remedies for bullets? You’re not invincible. And maybe you know that—maybe that’s your end game. But don’t think I’m going to make it easy for you to get that far.”

Daisy finds herself unable to look her in the eye barely halfway through the speech, feeling treacherous tears creeping into her eyes as she looks defiantly towards a corner of the van.

“Six months since I’ve seen you,” she eventually says in a measured voice that thankfully doesn’t wobble, “and then you come waltzing back in uninvited, hijacking my own car and trying telling me what to do.”

In her periphery, Bobbi is shaking her head. “I’m under no delusions that I can make you do a damn thing that you don’t want to. All I can do is try and make you want to.”

“You’re not off to a great start,” Daisy says, realizing that she’s just admitted that she’s willing to hear more.

“I was hoping I could finish convincing you in a slightly less horror-movie setting,” Bobbi says, the lighter tone bringing Daisy’s gaze back to hers. The look in Bobbi’s eyes echoes simpler times and better memories, and Daisy feels her resolve crumbling further.

“You offering to take the next five hundred miles?” she says, deciding there’s no point in fighting this foregone conclusion.

“I’ll do the next thousand,” Bobbi says, and Daisy glimpses the first smile between them in six months. “If you promise to talk for every one of them. I’ve missed you.”

Smiling still feels like defeat, but Daisy decides to think of it as surrender.

“I missed you too,” she whispers, barely leaning forward and letting the white flag fly.

When Bobbi pulls her into her arms, it doesn’t hurt at all.


End file.
